Vacancies are equilibrium defects while dislocations are referred as non-equilibrium defects. Why is it so?
Martin Baeker
Dislocations are not in thermal equilibrium. If you calculate the energy of a typical dislocation and enter this into the Boltzmann equation for the thermodynamical probability (exp -E/kT), you get a very low density, much smaller than actual dislocation densities.
For vacancies, the density of the vacancies is directly determined by temperature and the energy with the Boltzmann equation; so they are in thermal equilibrium.
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